Photos: Nearly 1,000 dead, thousands missing in Nepal–China border floods

What the report says

Devastating floods and mudslides along the Nepal–China border have left a widening death toll and thousands of people unaccounted for, according to Al Jazeera’s report based on official and wire-service updates. Nepal’s disaster authority said at least 939 people had died in the country, while Chinese state media reported 16 deaths in Tibet, bringing the known regional toll to 955.

Officials said 4,471 people were still missing across both sides of the border. In Nepal alone, the latest figures listed 3,925 missing, including 592 foreigners, with many believed to be workers on hydropower projects hit hard by the floods. The report said the number of missing hydropower staff had fallen to 639 from an earlier count of 933. The worst-affected areas included Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts, where more than 1,000 people remained unaccounted for combined.

The disaster has also affected security personnel, with missing Nepali nationals including army soldiers, police officers, and customs and immigration officials. In neighboring India, authorities in Uttar Pradesh said they had recovered 17 bodies from rivers flowing out of Nepal, though those deaths were not yet included in the official toll.

The scale of the losses has strained recovery efforts, with Nepal appealing for international help and saying it needed more than a thousand freezer units to store bodies. The report also noted that some recovered victims were being buried after DNA samples were taken, so families could later claim them. The situation underscores the human cost of a major cross-border disaster and the challenges of identifying the dead while thousands still await news of missing relatives.